The current academic publishing system undermines scientific progress.
Science advances through conjecture and rigorous criticism, yet our current publishing system doesn't reward the latter. As a result, neither does the wider academic culture. At multiple levels, the incentive structures are misaligned.
Academic journals profit from publishing exciting but often unreliable results, while scientists face pressure to produce positive findings or risk their careers. Meanwhile, the critical work of peer review is not transparent and goes uncompensated and unrecognized in academic careers.
Academic publishing is the most lucrative segment of the global publishing industry. The top 5 conglomerates account for 50% market share, averaging 20-40% margins and roughly $2 billion annual profit. The problem isn’t that these profits are too large, it is that they don't incentivize reliability because they come from monetizing academics' free labor and restricting access to knowledge.
Publishing is never actually free. Ultimately it is the tax payer that provides a majority of the funding. What responsibility does the place on publishers?
What if a new publishing paradigm could realign profits with scientific progress?What if market forces could reward finding errors and strengthening research quality, not just publishing novel claims.
For example, instead of paying $3000 to publish behind a paywall, why not use the fee to directly fund a transparent, large scale public review process where every identified flaw becomes a valuable contribution to the field. This would strengthen the original work’s significance and at the same time elevate the status and quality of peer review.
At C-SQD, we are developing a business model that creates incentive structures much better aligned with the two pillars of science, conjecture and criticism.